On the surface we all act like we all love each other and we're free and easy, and actually we're far more moralistic than any other society I've ever lived in. America demands invention and innovation to succeed. Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy. No company is preferable to bad. We are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health. You can't eat fish. It's 6,000 parts DDT per million all over the world, not counting radiation. To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek. The most effective action both resorts to power and engages conscience. Songs are life in 80 words or less. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. If you have an impulse, not if you're going to ruin someone elses' scene, if you have an impulse of a funny little add-on or taking something in a weird direction, try it. Women are like elephants. I like to look at 'em, but I wouldn't want to own one. There are opportunities everywhere, just as there have always been. Seeing what happens when you rip yourself open is what your job is all about. Mothers and daughters can stay very connected during teenage years. In the middle of your life, you can become very alone. Even though you're connected deeply to other family members, lovers, husbands, friends. If you believe that health care is a public good to be guaranteed by the state, then a single-payer system is the next best alternative. Unfortunately, it is fiscally unsustainable without rationing. An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof. I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife. The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters - not to talk in armies and nations and numbers - but to track it home. Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well. If the graves of the thousands of victims who have fallen in the terrible wars of the two races had been placed in line the philanthropist might travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, and be constantly in sight of green mounds. If you invent the Mini Cooper, pour all your energy and passion into it and it gets made, you should be on a roll. In the film industry you have to start again the next day. It's the sense of what family is at the dinner table. It was the joy of knowing mother was in the kitchen making our favorite dish. I wish more people would do this and recall the joy of life. Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change. I didn't actually begin professionally acting until I was 30. We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. There are things that I won't do on the radio. I mean, the next logical question is, what won't you do. I say, well, you know, you've got to find out when you're on the air. Many have left their families to defend our freedom. We salute their bravery; we express our appreciation and support to their families. And we pray for their safe return. I would rather lose in a cause that I know some day will triumph than to triumph in a cause that I know some day will fail. The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.